


To earn your wings

by rallamajoop



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Origin Story, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-07 19:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18879505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rallamajoop/pseuds/rallamajoop
Summary: Heather McNabb's career as an airline hostess comes to an end in much the usual manner: she meets a man.(Twomen, really, though not at once, and she wouldn't know it until later—but that's getting ahead of the story.)Or, the Innocents don'talwaysgo home at the end of the story.





	To earn your wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tallihensia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallihensia/gifts).



> Huge thanks to [hypatia-66](https://hypatia-66.livejournal.com/profile) for betaing this for me. 
> 
> There is [a long story](https://rallamajoop.tumblr.com/post/178143202622/an-update-on-that-charity-auction-thing-or-how-i) behind how this fic came to be, but the short version would be that Tallihensia requested something about one of UNCLE's recurring support staff girls, like Sarah Johnson or Heather McNabb. Heather McNabb was objectively not the easiest choice - she has bit parts in all of four episodes - but I couldn't resist the challenge. 
> 
> What we do learn about Heather in those episodes is that she's dated Napoleon (no surprise), she's a skilled hypnotist, she knits and owns a pet dachshund, and that she used to be a stewardess. That last detail didn't initially grab me - just one more way to add sex appeal to a sexy lady - until it hit me just how much potential there was in the idea of UNCLE recruiting flight attendants to their cause.
> 
> Not seeing it? Well, let me explain...

Heather McNabb's career as an airline hostess comes to an end in much the usual manner: she meets a man. ( _Two_ men, really, though not at once, and she wouldn't know it until later—but that's getting ahead of the story.) 

To listen to the airline's enduring press line, meeting _men_ ought to be the main objective of Heather's job. _Are you looking for a job with almost a 100% chance of finding a husband within two years?_ sang the recruitment ads, _Flying the skyways is one of the best ways to learn to be a good wife!_ To the prospective (male) customer, they promised: _What we're actually doing is recruiting brides for bachelors! A girl with a year's flying experience amounts to combination mother, nurse, confidante, teacher, comforter, cook and companion. She knows not only how to talk, but, more important, when to talk. She is devoted to the idea of service. She is ideal wife material._ This invariably came capped off with a photo of a smiling stewardess, her makeup fresh, her hair primly curled, her hat pinned neatly in place—and, of course, the details of your nearest travel agent ( _book now, and join America's greatest singles' club in the sky!_ )

Certainly, _service_ is the industry's byword, but this glossy image of homemaker-in-training has always existed slightly divorced from the Heather's reality, cohabiting two-or-more to a room in cheap apartments with a rotating roster of half a dozen other girls (why waste money when half of you will always be away on a flight?), where the breadbox sometimes contained six different half-eaten loaves, the kitchen drawer was stocked with three spoons and a dozen bottle-openers, each towel had been filched from a different hotel room, and no-one had quite got around to buying a mop ( _goodness, mother, we were only living there four months!_ ) Last winter, three of their roommates had packed off to live in Dallas with less fuss or forethought than most women would put into a two-week vacation—in summer, they were back again, just as easily. 

Not that the job favoured the flighty or scatterbrained—the fugue state one reached traversing so many time zones in a day on your feet—walking from New York to Los Angeles and back, as the joke went—would test any constitution. But between those opposing poles of fun and the fatigue, there's the simple fact that so many hours watching the world pass beneath your feet would rearrange anyone's perspective. It was one thing to read in the papers about the politics or famine happening half a world away, the plane crash on the other side of the country; it was quite another to have seen those places first-hand, to have flown in that very plane—perhaps even to know some of the crew (there's still an article about the crash landing of flight 543 pinned to the noticeboard at home, thanks to one of her roommates, even months after the event). Girls who could smile, look you right in the eye and assure you that the pilots would have absolutely _no_ trouble landing the plane with only one working engine, who instinctively counted the elderly and infirm on every flight thinking, _oh gosh, how are we going to get this many out if we have to ditch?_ —who could tell each other spine-tingling real-life horror stories about having been on the verge of a midnight touchdown in Dallas when a power cut had extinguished every light outside the plane, plunging the entire world into total darkness—those were the stewardesses Heather knew. 

But perhaps those, too, are vital skills for any wife-to-be. Heather has never been married, so how could _she_ expect to know?

They all dated, of course—one or two of Heather's more brazen colleagues just about have a boy in every port. But when one of those boys got as far as going down on his knee—well, that was another matter. Plenty are ready to go—girls who've spent their average-of-twenty-six-months of duty, who are ready to put down some roots. But then there are girls like May, who spent nearly a year hiding her wedding ring in her purse before the swelling of her belly gave her away, or Susan, who kept both her summer and winter uniforms neatly pressed every morning for months after her wedding, reading the numbers off every plane that flew overhead, hoping today might be the day the airline found itself so short-staffed they might need her... ( _"I just don't think Mikey will wait for me another year,_ " she'd cried, when Heather had found her weeping over her suitcase, _"But how do I tell him I'm not ready to give this up?"_ )

May and Susan were still eager to meet Heather for coffee whenever she had downtime in their respective parts of the country, eyes shining with a wistful hunger as she shared details about the new Boeing 707's, or the last trip where she found herself packing her ice-skates and her bathing suit in the same suitcase. Admitting to either of them that, for her, the job has lost something of its sheen of late—that would be sacrilege unimaginable. 

Of course, they'd all _understand_ if she told them tomorrow that she was ready to give it up, given all she's been through. But none of her friends would understand the _why_ —it's not peace of mind, not thoughts of the home and family in her future, but the ineffable sense that her career has peaked too early, and left her nowhere to go next. But every time she gives one of those nervous first-time passengers the company-approved spiel about how _safe_ air travel is nowadays, all those memorised statistics that roll off her tongue, there's a traitorous part of her that wants to say, "But you never know—maybe today we'll get lucky!"

Heather's had her moment. By the conventional wisdom, it ought to be high time for some fine young man to sweep into her life and take her away from all this. But the man to do that isn't the rich passenger or the dashing young pilot the public assumes must be the stewardess' natural match, or even the boy-from-back-home the press releases _insist_ most of their girls will eventually go back to. No, the moment comes while Heather is attempting to rescue a distressed passenger from the wrong side of a stuck toilet door in mid-flight. 

(It's a glamourous job, really.)

Notwithstanding his many years of intermittent media attention, Dr. Theodor Schaller, renowned nuclear physicist, was plainly not accustomed to being recognised as such—least of all by the woman showing him how to tighten his seatbelt. Though he was surprised and obviously flattered when Heather first greeted him by name, by the middle of the flight she'd found herself being regarded with faint suspicion each time she passed his seat. A middle-aged man with a silvering beard, of no great stature, Dr. Schaller had enough of the dotty professor look about him that Heather had put it down to professional eccentricities. There was certainly no time or obvious way to reassure him with her hands full and nearly a hundred other passengers in her care. The possibility that he might be prone to _real_ paranoia doesn't occur to her until the latch on the starboard bathroom door jammed in place with the good doctor on the wrong side.

" _Help_!" Not even the combined muffling of the door and ambient engine noise can drown out the panic in Dr. Schaller's voice. " _I am trapped! They have trapped me!_ "

"Can you hear me, Doctor?" Heather calls back. "If you'll stop rattling the latch, we'll have you out of there in just a moment." 

Wanda hadwarned her about the latch on the starboard bathroom—nothing but trouble ever since the last time they had the aircraft in for a refit. There's a trick to getting it to unstick, but with Dr. Schaller leaning hard on the opposite side she's had no luck in replicating it. The irony that _this_ middling occasion should be the one where she utterly fails to rescue a passenger from behind one of these blasted doors is not lost on her. 

It's then Heather feels the polite tap on the shoulder announcing that another of the passengers has wandered over, presumably to see whether perhaps a man who has been in an airplane toilet once or twice himself might be exactly what's needed to resolve the situation. "Excuse me? I was wondering if I might lend a hand."

Heather recognises him as the man from seat 34A—the row behind Dr. Schaller's—plainly an experienced flier, with his smart suit, confident charm and an openly appreciative eye for Heather and her colleagues. She'd guessed he'd be after her attention before the end of the flight. She'd have to allow that he's found a more novel opening than most. 

"That's kind of you, sir," she tells him, "but there's a trick to getting this one open when it sticks, and unless you happen to know it, I don't know that there's much to be done." 

Mr. 34A gives the door a curious look. "I take it this particular facility has, er, form for this sort of misbehaviour?"

"Three times on the leg from Chicago. Wanda's the expert, but she's still serving drinks near the tail." And if Heather goes down there now, she's bound to be waylaid by half-a-dozen different passengers wanting this-or-that before she makes it back. 

" _I cannot breathe!_ " cries Dr. Schaller. " _I think I smell smoke!_ " Given the state of the ashtray in that bathroom, this does not strike Heather as unlikely. 

Mr. 34A raps loudly on the door. "Hello?" he calls, in an almost comically exaggerated tone, "Can you hear me in there?"

The rattling on the door from inside ceases. " _Is that you, Mr. S..._ " Through the muffling of the door, Heather doesn't catch the name. 

"It's all right, Doctor, just a minor maintenance issue," replies the alleged Mr. S. "We'll have you out of there in a jiffy." To Heather, in more normal tones, he adds, "Obviously a nervous flier. Where did you say I'd find your friend?"

Heather keeps Dr. Schaller company while Mr. S. goes to retrieve Wanda from the tail section. 

On being properly apprised of the situation, Wanda pushes her tray into Heather's hands and gives the door the look of a nurse studying a malingering patient. She then promptly shoos the both of them into the galley to give herself some space. 

"I suppose claustrophobia will get to the best of us," Mr. S. offers conversationally, while they wait, "You realise that's _the_ Dr. Theodor Schaller you've got in there? The physicist, from the article in _Time_ last month? We got to talking in the departure lounge."

"Is it really?" replies Heather, the very picture of polite interest. "Well, I'm sure I'll be telling this story a while. It isn't every day you rescue a famous scientist from an ill-fitting door."

Mr. S. gives her a look she can't immediately decipher. "Well, not most of us," is the slightly cryptic reply. "While I've got you here, speaking of definite articles, is it _the_ Heather McNabb I have the pleasure of speaking to?" He nods significantly at her name-tag. 

Startled, Heather is momentarily taken aback. "Which Heather McNabb were you thinking of?" 

The man gives her a slightly sheepish smile and, to her amazement, produces a well-folded news clipping from his jacket pocket. "The Heather McNabb of Flight 543, if I'm lucky." 

Heather stares blankly at the headline ("MIRACLE LANDING"). The title and photo are new to her—this copy must come from a different paper to the version pinned to the notice board back home, but the text is unmistakably the same. She's walked past it so many times it's become something of a metaphor for every mixed feeling about how the incident continues to loom large over her career; seeing it again here, it seems almost inevitable that it would have found her at least once more, when she least expected it. The article isn't _about_ Heather by any stretch of the imagination—her name appears in the text all of once—yet here she is. Is this how Dr. Schaller feels, getting recognised from the paper by complete strangers?

"I should introduce myself properly—Napoleon Solo, journalist." Napoleon Solo, journalist, hands her a card which seems to prove that 'Napoleon Solo' is not, in fact, a name he's made up on the spot. "I know the story will be old news now, but my editor's all about new angles—the human perspective. I'd love to get your side of the story."

"You mean, you want to interview me? For an article?" Heather finds herself unsure how she feels about the prospect. Does she _want_ the recognition? "I'm deeply flattered, Mr. Solo, but I really can't..."

"Oh, not here and now—perhaps we could make a date of it? Sometime when you're off-duty."

The actual scheduling of such a date is briefly interrupted by the emancipation of Dr. Schaller from the washroom, in a state equal parts flustered, apologetic, and relieved. Heather nonetheless leaves the galley in possession of Mr. Solo's card, with the words "Lunch, Wednesday" and the address of a café scrawled on the back. 

Well, why not?

* * *

It takes until the morning of her lunch date for it to occur to Heather that there is a chance that Mr. Solo has no real intention of writing his article—that he may be no kind of journalist at all—and that she has been the target of one of the more creative efforts to lure a stewardess into a date in recent memory. It wouldn't explain his recognising her name ( _would_ a journalist be more likely to memorise such a trivial detail? To have a copy of the article on hand? Heather hasn't known nearly enough journalists to guess), but she's seen the airways play host to so many unlikely meetings over the years that it's hard to find one coincidence terribly suspicious. In any case, she'll never know if she misses her date now, and that would really be a waste. 

A more dedicated stewardess would have notified her supervisor she'd been approached by a journalist. The airline won't hesitate to fire her if they discover she cooperated in the creation of bad press. Even if Mr. Solo does produce the sort of breezy general-interest piece she expects (assuming he intends to produce anything at all), little makes the airline as nervous as a reporter asking questions about a crash. A year ago, no-one would ever have called Heather _careless_ —but one near-death experience, and here she is, openly courting the very real chance of unemployment without a care in the world. 

And that's the problem, isn't it? It all seems a bit trivial these days. But perhaps talking out the experience with a stranger will be just what she needs to get it out of her system and back to normal. It can't hurt to try. 

What sort of details will a journalist want, anyway? Probably a lot of dosh about how thrilling and terrifying it was, as the plane began to lurch, the aft windows darkening with smoke, the struggle of keeping her balance and calming her frantic passengers while Mary fought her way to the tail with the fire-extinguisher. But perhaps he'll prefer to skip over the claustrophobic nightmare of evacuating forty people from a burning plane (a shame—it's the phase she has most cause to be proud of), and skip to the relief that came afterwards, when the final head-count proved everyone had made it out alive. 

The airline would prefer _that_ be the focus: she ought to emphasise how her training took over so quickly and kept her so busy she barely had the time to feel scared (true, though in part because there was so little _time_ )— how cleanly the inflatable evacuation slide deployed (which it did—once Heather had completed her clumsy scramble over the seats to pass all those passengers hammering on a door they had no idea how to open)—that sort of thing. 

She isn't rightly sure which version would be the more honest, or whether honesty is what should matter today—and so it is that Heather arrives for her date without any clear plan what she expects to say.

The café is a pleasant little venue with open-air seating out the front, but Mr. Solo has tucked himself away into one of the cosier booths at the back—the better to talk privately, presumably. He rises to greet her with a smile. 

"Would you like to order, before we begin? I can recommend the veal." 

Heather casts her eye briefly down the menu before deciding she may as well take the recommendation. Half-hidden beneath Solo's own folded menu, she spies a notepad and pen already sitting on the table. If this is a charade, he must mean to see it through. 

"Well, shall we get down to business?" he proposes, once the waiter has taken their orders and left. "Tell me, have you ever been interviewed before, Miss McNabb?"

"Three times to get this job," she replies, a trifle glib. She'd also been weighed, measured, made to walk twice across the room, had the roots of her hair examined for any trace its vibrant red might not be natural, and (between sessions) had all her references thoroughly examined—all capped off with six weeks of intensive training, if you weren't sent home for failing a single grooming check before you ever got your wings. "But I don't expect that's the variety of interview you mean."

Mr. Solo smiles. "Well, I hope you'll feel there's less riding on this one. Why don't we begin with a little as-you-know—save us going back over familiar details." Collecting his notebook, he licks a finger flips to an early page. 

"So, as reported by our own _Gazette_ , Flight 543 was just under an hour from arrival at Dallas-Fort Worth on an otherwise routine commuter trip when it began experiencing engine trouble. Pilots were forced to bring their plane down in a field outside the city limits, but a fire broke out near the rear of the aircraft and flames continued to spread after touchdown, necessitating rapid evacuation of the plane. Of the four crew members, co-pilot Steven O'Connor and stewardess Mary Bosza both sustained injuries in the crash and were unable to assist—nevertheless, all 52 passengers and crew escaped the craft intact." Over the top of his notebook, Solo gives her a significant look. "I imagine the experience loses something in the summary."

It all sounds so mundane, recounted in Mr. Solo's pleasant tones. He might have been recounting a football match. "Where would you like me to start?"

"Most people would say you and your passengers had a most fortunate escape, Miss McNabb," Solo opines. "But I don't think we need to give all the credit to fortune, do we? The fortune was that they came to be flying with such a capable crew."

If this is Mr. Solo's angle, the airline may yet shelve all objections and send him a fruit basket to boot. "Oh, it's an honour just to work alongside men like our pilots," Heather enthuses. "They train them for emergencies, of course—we're all a little bit in awe of how they keep their heads no matter what you throw at them—but without Paul and Steve in the cockpit, I might not be here to speak to you today." In the back of Heather's mind, the spectre of her disapproving supervisor nods, satisfied. Her immediate audience in Mr. Solo, however, seems less enthused. 

"Well, ah, far be it from me to dispute that, but we were rather hoping you could give us a different angle. Getting the plane on the ground is one thing, but there ought to be _some_ credit leftover for the women who had to get 48 panicked passengers out of that plane before it went up in flames, shouldn't there?"

Heather's heart thumps hard in her chest. "Is that flattery, Mr. Solo?"

His smile tells her it might well be. The way he catches her eye tells a different story. "I'll be frank with you, Miss McNabb—I've had the pleasure of speaking to one or two of the passengers who were onboard Flight 543, and they _both_ told me that if a certain stewardess hadn't been there to manage the evacuation, _they_ might not be here today." Mr. Solo taps the side of his nose, "Flattery, absolutely—but also absolutely true."

Something bubbles strangely at the base of Heather's chest. "You make her sound like quite the remarkable woman."

"Oh, she was." Solo leans in, as if sharing a secret. "In fact, I'm assured that not only was she the very last person off the plane, she went back in alone to rescue the last man still trapped inside."

"How...?" Heather stares across the table in disbelief. "You've spoken to him?" Is _that_ why Mr. Solo had been so eager to speak to her? It's not that she wanted to hide that part of the story, but the passenger in question hadn't seemed like the sort who'd want the attention that would come from that detail going to print—and the entire sequence had been so surreal there've been moments since when she wondered if it had happened at all. Who'd believe it?

Mr. Solo, it seems, would believe it all. "To him, and a young woman from the same flight—a ' _Julie'_ —you may remember her."

Oh, Heather remembers. Mr. Solo has certainly done his research. Has he already interviewed every other person on the plane? Heather is starting to believe he might have.

Julie was the sort of passenger who'd have stayed with you even after a wholly unremarkable flight. From the moment the girl had stepped onto the plane, she'd had the look of someone on route to a family funeral (she wouldn't be the first Heather had encountered, poor dear). To add insult to injury, she'd gone on to have one of the worst cases of air-sickness Heather had seen in a good long while. 

"I'm so sorry," she'd confessed to Heather, awkwardly crumpling the top of the sick bag, her eyes flickering awkwardly to her travelling companion, "I've never been in a plane before." 

If she had been hoping for sympathy, she'd looked in the wrong place—the man beside her had plainly run out some time ago. he'd snapped at Heather. "Can't you see she doesn't want you fussing over her?" 

Heather had dutifully apologised and backed away, but there had been a plaintive note in the girl's voice that convinced her it certainly wasn't _she_ who wanted to be left alone—there would be no pleasing the both of these two simultaneously. The passenger manifest named them as Julie and Andrew Jones, but there was never any polite way to _ask_ how two people might be related (father and daughter? Uncle and niece?)—let alone whether one might find it in himself to show the other a little more kindness.

If this charming exchange wasn't enough, there'd also been the matter of the passenger in row 7, who had spent most of the trip sneaking furtive glances forward in the Jones' direction before Heather decided to intervene. The passenger manifest listed his name as Harrison Smith—no obvious relation to the Jones pair—but if he's noticed how ill the girl is, perhaps she can offer some reassurance. 

"Someone you know up there?" she'd asked him, leaning on the chair in front. Mr. Smith had looked both surprised and suitably embarrassed at having been caught. 

"I am sorry, I did not think I had been so obvious," he admitted, sheepish. "I have been trying to make up my mind whether he is someone I recognise."

"An old friend?" Heather asked, though it was hard to imagine there was anything friendly in this relationship.

"Not of mine. A, ah, _friend_ of mine knew him better—he treated her rather poorly," Smith reported, with obvious distaste. "Perhaps you could give me his name? At least I would know."

"Oh, I'm sorry, we're not supposed to give out passenger information that way." Heather was suitably apologetic. "But if you gave me his name, I suppose I could tell you if you were right?" Whatever name he supplied, she would, naturally, tell him he was mistaken. No matter what disservice Mr. Jones might have done Mr. Smith's friend, this was no place for these men to settle their differences. 

The wry smile on Mr. Smith's lips suggested he'd guessed he wouldn't be able to trust her answer. "Never mind. I promise I will try to contain my curiosity."

It _could_ have been nothing. Heather fervently hoped it was nothing—frayed nerves and mistaken identity, and no-one else's business. But it was disquieting to think that Julie Jones—whatever her relationship to the man sitting next to her—and Mr. Smith's lady friend might have more in common than anyone else knew. Heather had been in half a mind to have a quiet word with airport security when they landed, in hope there might be something they could do before the two Jones left the building—but there was nothing else to be done in the meantime but keep half an eye on the situation. With 44 other passengers to worry about, even half an eye might be more than she could afford. 

(It's odd to think back on it now, and remember there'd been a time when she'd been sure _this_ minor awkwardness between passengerswould be the great drama of Flight 543.)

It was some time later that she'd glanced down the cabin and noticed that bothMr. Smith and Mr. Jones were missing from their seats. The cabin did not boast more than a handful of places large enough to hide two full-grown men, and none of them suited to a confrontation which might conceivably come to blows—and Heather certainly would have worried about the matter a great deal more, had this not been the same minute that everything else about that flight suddenly began going very, very wrong. 

Later, Julie's had been the very last head still visible over the backs of the cabin seats, when Heather had looked back from the exit through the smoke. The girl had been frozen in place, white as a sheet and wholly abandoned by Andrew Jones, staring mutely forward to the end of the aisle as if stunned—right up until Heather dragged her bodily from her seat. She'd jumped half out of her skin when Heather pushed her out onto the slide—and Heather herself had been on the very edge of following her when it occurred to her that she wasn't _quite_ certain that Julie really _had_ been the last person left on the plane. 

* * *

"What went through your head when you went back into the cabin?" asks Mr. Solo. "The fire was spreading, the cabin filled with smoke. You must have known the danger."

"The smoke was the _reason_ I went back in," Heather protests. When Mr. Solo raises his eyebrows, she explains, "Taking care of our passengers is our duty. How could I be sure everyone was off the plane when I couldn't see to the back of the cabin?"

"Did it occur to you that you might not make it back out?" 

"I... don't remember." If not, she has no good excuse. Plane crashes may be just one more headline to the masses, but Heather—Heather has known people who weren't lucky enough to have Paul and Steve at the helm. In the real world, senseless heroism isn't always rewarded. But still... "All I remember thinking is 'what if we've missed someone?' And there _was_ someone still on-board, and we _did_ make it back out. Didn't we?"

* * *

_Every row_ , Heather had told herself, breathing through a dampened handkerchief as she staggered up the aisle. Long seconds have already been and gone since her last gasp of clean air at the exit, and so noxious was the smoke it almost seems to turn solid in her lungs. But any row could be hiding someone like Julie, frozen with fear, hunched over out of sight in the smoke...four more to go, then three...

In the cacophony of the burning plane, the rhythmic banging at the far end of the cabin did not catch her attention until she was almost on top of it. _Bang_ , and a shiver ran through the debris wedged up against the starboard cubicle door. _Bang_ —another shiver. _Bang._

Oh god—someone was trapped in there!

The violence of their landing had sent a number of items flying free from the overhead lockers and gone tumbling down the isle—a solid case was stuck in the narrow corridor separating the two cubicles. There followed one horrible moment where it seemed that even with Heather's full weight dragging on the handle, she wasn't going to be able to get it free—or the handle might give before the blockage did. But then something made a terrible screeching noise, and Heather found herself falling backwards over her heels, and the door finally sprang open with one final _bang_ , a man's trousered leg flopping out after it—caught mid-kick at the crucial moment. 

Eyes streaming in the smoke, Heather barely recognised the shock of blond hair that told her she had at last found out just where Harrington Smith had been hidden away when the engines cut out and everything went mad. Now sprawled half-in, half-out of the cubicle, his face bleeding thickly from a gash above his eye, he'd blinked at her as if stunned (very likely he had been, if he'd just survived a crash in a washroom). Heather did not rightly remember which of them had helped the other up. 

Back in the cabin, the fire raged; the exit Heather had pushed Julie into only a minute ago was now too hot to approach. There was no inflated slide for escapees McNabb and Smith to glide down to freedom, but light and smoke still flowed in opposing streams through one of the narrow window exits, opened by a passenger after the crash. Reaching it required them to scramble across the seats, around a door-plug which, in the passengers' hurry, had been discarded inside the plane—then out through a hole in the fuselage only a couple of feet square, in metal that was already hot to the touch. The drop from the wing was at least the height of a man, and substantially taller than the man Heather had rescued, but he rolled on landing and reached back up to catch her as she eased herself over the edge after him. 

Not many of the other passengers looked up when they'd emerged from the far side the plane, half-leaning on one another to join the other scattered survivors. But Julie had hugged her wordlessly, and Heather had mostly managed to hug back—up until it became suddenly necessary for her to lean away and be violently sick onto the ground (how _sensible_ Julie had been to get all of this awfulness out of her system earlier, she'd thought, with a wild, bubbling giggle that caught in her throat and turned into a cough). 

The uncomfortable truth about the final head-count that followed was that they'd actually come up one man short. But two of the other passengers _swore_ to having seen Andrew Jones' figure disappearing off into the trees, and _surely_ he'd turn up again once the panic wore off and he got the better of himself. Wouldn't he? 

* * *

"I understand the other stewardess on Flight 543 hasn't returned to work," says Mr Solo. "Did you have any second thoughts?"

Heather doesn't know what to tell him. Poor Mary—the clock had been ticking for her ever since her 31st birthday. At best, she had less than a year left before she reached the stewardess' mandatory retirement age, but she'd loathed the thought that a disaster like 543 might be her final flight. God knew she'd tried, but even after all the time she took getting herself out of the cast and cleared for duty, perhaps it had still been too soon. As soon as she'd set foot on the plane again, her leg had come alive with phantom pain and buckled under her. They'd carried her off in tears. The airline, always so considerate, had transferred her to a bookings job. She'd borne it all with characteristic bravery, but it would never be the same. 

Heather more than understands—it had taken a month after returning to flying before she worked up the nerve to bid on another flight on a DC-7. A week later, she'd had her own moment of weakened knees when one unusually-heavy bounce on a windy landing flushed the memory of the smell of burning upholstery and jet fuel straight into the back of her nostrils, knuckles white on her jump-seat. But the moment had passed—too quickly, if anything, and that might be the problem: _her_ moment has passed. Heather has faced the greatest test this job can offer, and it's thrown the banality of every glowing passenger recommendation she might ever receive again into stark relief. And then that traitorous little voice in her head had taken root, whispering: _maybe we'll go down again_ —and she'd shiver, but not from fear. 

She _doesn't_ want that—one brush with death hasn't sent her crazy. But nor has it awakened some new passion, or let her appreciate the little things in life with new eyes. She just isn't sure what she _does_ want anymore. 

"A few," she tells Mr. Solo. "I suppose I didn't know what else I'd do."

"Really?" Mr. Solo says, conversationally. "Because it seems to me that any good stewardess has a _multitude_ of transferrable skills. Why, how many other women your age would have been to Singapore and Tokyo, would be equally comfortable in the company of senators, movie stars, soldiers and refugees? Experience like yours could certainly open doors."

"Could it?" asks Heather, amused. "I imagine it takes more than having mixed with a few movie stars to get hired as one." 

"Ah, but that's not all, is it?" he says, a strange, new energy in his smile. "I've been doing some research, you see, looking into how they train you for just this sort of scenario, what sort of qualifications they look for, and I've been struck by just _how_ qualified your average stewardess must be. It's a given they'd prefer girls with multiple languages, of course—say, French and Spanish," he suggests, "but I hadn't realised just how many of you had college degrees to your names—say..." and if there was something pointed in his last example, the next is even more so, "a Bachelor of Communications, with a minor in Psychology as well."

Heather feels the prickle of goosebumps tingle over her skin. Those aren't just _anyone's_ qualifications. "Who else have you been speaking to?"

The twinkle in Mr. Solo's eye assures her this was very much the intended response. "You mean, besides your friend Julie and... ah..."

"Harrington Smith?" she supplies, a trifle vexed by this strange shift in the tenor of their exchange.

"Well," a smile, "that's not what his friends call him."

"His friends?" Whatever she's missing now—he's _playing_ with her.

"Friends who, I assure you, are most grateful to have him alive." For one dizzying moment, Mr. Solo is as serious as a heart attack, but before Heather can fully process it, their glib little game has resumed. "But it was _you_ we were talking about, wasn't it, Miss McNabb? Because it's all very well to go over your qualifications on paper, but you're the one person on the plane who knows who sits in every seat—the airlines teach you to memorise each name on the smaller aircraft, don't they? You're the one person who can walk by every seat a dozen times in an hour without suspicion, who can keep an eye on anyone who might be of, shall we say, _particular_ interest." With a twinkle in his eye that Heather finds quite at odds with the menace of that last statement, he adds, "To me, that raises some most intriguing possibilities."

"Mr. Solo," says Heather, rapidly losing patience with the subtext of this exchange, "who do you _really_ work for?"

"Who do you think I work for?" he counters. Now she's being _tested_. 

"I don't know," Heather admits, mind buzzing. "I was about to say 'obviously, someone with the influence to make the airline to hand over my flight schedule, so you could make sure you and I found ourselves on the same plane.' But then I remembered I wasn't even supposed to be on that flight—they only rostered me the day before when another girl called in sick. But that wasn't a coincidence either, was it?"

"Not entirely," Solo agrees, smiling. "I hope you'll forgive me for that. I wanted to see you at work before we approached you officially. The U.N.C.L.E. doesn't hire lightly, Miss McNabb—even when our recruits come on the personal recommendation of one of our best agents. I hope you'll forgive Dr. Schaller as well—it wasn't for nothing if he's become a little paranoid lately."

U.N.C.L.E.—she's _heard_ of U.N.C.L.E. "You... want me to be a _spy_?" And here she'd honestly thought she was joking when she compared this to a job interview.

Mr. Solo holds up a finger. "Not a spy—not precisely. Don't look at this as a change of profession so much as... an extension of the one you already have. You'd go on working as a stewardess—that's important for your cover, we can't have you appearing _only_ on flights of interest. But it's been brought to our attention lately that some of our existing agents might be a little... obtrusive, when running courier duty, or when expected to tail a suspect on a crowded plane. And an obtrusive agent puts everyone around him at risk."

"Mr. Solo..." Something horribly cold settles in Heather's stomach as it dawns on her that this last point is no hypothetical. "What really brought down our plane?"

He meets her gaze without blinking. "The desperate act of a cornered man—travelling under the assumed name of 'Andrew Jones.' When he and his hostage boarded that flight, we at U.N.C.L.E. were fully aware the device he was carrying had the potential to bring down a plane, but we assumed he would not be so reckless with his _own_ flight. Unfortunately, after identifying and disabling the agent we had tailing him on the plane, he must have realised we would be waiting for him the moment he landed. We assume that's why he decided to take his chances of escaping in the confusion of a forced landing. It would seem," he adds, "that he had even more faith in the ability of your pilots to land a wounded plane than even you."

"And... what about Andrew Jones? Is he...?" The airline had assured her their missing man 'been accounted for'. They'd never said _how_. 

"In our custody. He didn't get far. Neither he or his device will ever fly again. But there will always be another Andrew Jones, and next time, we need to do better."

Heather swallows drily. "What about Julie?"

"Safe. Reunited with her family. You and Mr... er, _Smith_ , achieved that much. So, what do you say, Miss McNabb? Are you prepared to help us protect the _next_ Julie?" Without waiting for her reply, he adds, "I'd warn you, it's not _all_ excitement. A great deal of the work we do is every bit of tedious and mundane as any other menial ground job."

Does she have to decide right away? This is far too much to take in all at once. "Do I get back pay?" she asks, in lieu of a real answer. "Since I've just learned I've already been working for you since Flight 543, that seems only right, don't you think?"

Mr. Solo takes her clumsy attempt to lighten the mood in kind. "I think that might be arranged."

"What about other girls? Will it be just me?"

"Initially. You'll be our first recruit. But we do hope to expand the initiative if all goes well. I'm pleased to say," and he _does_ sound pleased, or at least amused, "the airlines seem to have done a fine job of narrowing down the pool of qualified candidates."

And that's just it: if she turns him down, they'll find someone else—and that's the moment Heather realises that she's going to say _yes_. She'll do the sensible thing first and take a few days to think it over—but it's all just a formality, really. 

Still, some formalities must be followed. "How long do I have to think it over?"

"Take all the time you need," Mr. Solo promises her, even as Heather privately resolves to have an answer back to him inside a week. "And when you have made up your mind..." He fishes a new card from his pocket—this one bearing the same name, "Napoleon Solo", but also the letters _U.N.C.L.E._ as well as "Section 2: Operations and Enforcement."

As Heather studies the card, he adds, "Oh, and whatever you decide—if there are any of your colleagues you might like to recommend as additional candidates..." He winks at her. "Miss McNabb, it's been a pleasure."

He leaves Heather with his card, her veal, and a dizzying feeling she'd usually associate with a combined lack of both oxygen and sleep. All she can think is, _recruiting brides for bachelors, hm? **And** spies for spymasters, too! _

But presumably they couldn't print that part, even if they knew. 

**Author's Note:**

> In writing this thing, I have read so much and borrowed so much from my sources that I've made [a companion post](https://rallamajoop.tumblr.com/post/185163574767/on-the-history-of-the-airline-stewardess-and-why) about research stuff - you can find it on my tumblr if you're interested.


End file.
